Chapter Text
You slumped into your sofa when you got home. You wanted to cry but the tears that threatened to fall were held back only by sheer exhaustion. Maybe you could have cried once. Once. But since then, after a certain point after you became a fully fledged adult, your body decided that your body could no longer lose any more water through crying alone.
You were trapped in an endless maze of piling paperwork, ticking clocks hung on empty grey walls and glitzy nights out with people you couldn’t bother to remember the names of. In all fairness, you'd be surprised if they knew yours. The only reason you were invited out was simply out of politeness and a system involving office politics that still made no sense to you. It was all an empty inertia that whispered through you like morning fog rising off the surface of a still lake. In the first light of dawn, you could just make out the joy and laughter of those around you, yet from where you stood on the shore there was only a suffocating silence holding you together.
The only joy that had registered as more than a blip on your radar had happened over three months ago in a bar.
The beat of the club thrummed through your core as you sat alone at the bar, ignored even by the bartenders shaking cocktails to the beat. You saw the sweat on your coworkers’ skin glisten as they grinded on the dance floor, flashing in throbbing magenta lights juxtaposed by indigo blue shadows. Their teeth were bright behind painted red lips and their eyes were shut in the orgasmic bliss of alcohol, ecstasy and carefree dancing. They were light and bright on that Friday night. They were alive as you watched on from the shadows.
From where you sat, you could almost feel some of their happiness soaking into your skin. Almost. There wasn't much joy to be had when you knew that you were only brought along so they could let loose and get a safe ride home. You were a little pet to pat and coo at before leaving behind to sit in an empty house. You were there to bring joy to others, not to yourself.
In all fairness, you'd given up on your own happiness long ago.
You were sipping your drink when a strangely long shadow overcast you.
"Hello?" you asked dumbly as the shade turned to face you.
When you finally got a good look at him through the strobe lights, your jaw dropped.
Before you stood a colossus. He was a mechanical giant, honour and glory personified in a burning pyre dedicated to a lost god. He was glorious, defined like Michelangelo's son yet cryptic like Da Vinci's daughter. He was a melding of masterpieces, and that was all without his face.
He was hooded, looking as though he'd bring an axe upon your neck at any moment. But where you expected cruelty and coldness in his eyes, they seemed to be wide with wonder. How anyone could hold such kindness and beauty in a world as artificially sterile as yours astounded you.
"Hallo," you strained to hear his accented timbre, “is anyone sitting here?"
You looked out into the crowd but your coworkers were lost in the throng of grinding and gasping.
“No. Do you want me to move?"
The man looked shocked, worried even when he slid into the stool beside you and said, “Not at all. Actually, I'd like you to stay.”
"For what?” you frowned.
The man leaned in a bit closer, albeit hesitantly, "To get to know you. You looked…”
"Lonely?” you snorted bitterly.
"Beautiful,” the man offered instead.
Your eyes widened momentarily. Before you could dismiss him he continued.
"You’re sitting where I usually sit when I'm dragged out here,” the man smiled with his eyes, "it's nice to be alone, but it's better being alone with someone who understands."
That was all it took for him to win you over with open arms.
He knew. He understood what it was like to be the weird one, the odd one out. You could sit in your little nest and be ugly ducklings together while the golden geese gaggled together on the dance floor.
And for a beautiful couple of hours, you felt seen. You felt you could breathe fresh air after years of crushing weight on your chest. He was the lightness you'd craved ever since you'd moved away to the city. He seemed to fill a niche you'd never known existed within you. He was the balm to the burning pain of existence. You wanted him completely and entirely, and the drink urged you to make good on that feeling. But just as you did manage to get close, he left.
He said he was going to the washroom, and not a minute later, your 'friends' were dragging you out the door as their designated driver.
“Please," Amy whined, “I just wanna go home!"
“Can't you wait a bit?" you asked.
“She wants to go home now," Hailey glared at you with a stark coldness that left you shivering.
“I just met somebody-"
“Now."
You couldn't argue. Amy was crying and the others looked at you with disgust and disdain, almost offended by your attempts to try and stay for just a few minutes longer.
“Why do you even want to stay? It's not like you actually like coming out with us."
“I bet she was just making that guy up or something,” you heard someone mutter behind your back.
You looked across the room to where the washrooms were tucked around the corner. With a sigh, you realized that whoever that man was, he probably left. Maybe he just used the excuse of a washroom to leave you. She was right. There was nothing for you here.
"I'll start the car," you muttered and pulled your keys out of your bag.
You heard the women mutter gross sneers behind your back as you left them for the parking lot. Moments later, you brought your car around front and let them pile into it. Amy sat beside you, bawling into your sensitive ears the entire way back as you prayed that she’d keep her stomach contents contained. You debated smashing your foot into the accelerator and aiming at the nearest telephone pole. The only thing stopping you was the fact that you were too tired to even try.
Three months passed and the image of that man still hadn't left your mind. He was always there, a distant dream to tease you with when filling out legal forms and writing up contracts. You imagined what it might have been like to let those powerful arms weave around your shoulders. He seemed so terribly gentle when you talked to him. When you spoke together, it was like the world faded away. It was only you and him. His eyes were so brilliant as they soaked in your form. He was the only man you could ever honestly believe when he told you that he truly desired you. It was a strange feeling, but it was exciting and new in a tedium world. He was there making orange juice for you when you skipped breakfast in the mornings. He was over your shoulder and whispering encouraging words into your ear when you felt yourself breaking down at lunch. Most of all, he was there lying in bed beside you, behind you, on top of you when you closed your eyes to sleep.
In those three months afterwards, life had only gotten worse. Now that you had a taste of passion, you were dying in a desert of attention. To be seen was to be loved, as foolish as the thought was. It had become so bad that you swore you started seeing the man around you. Sometimes it would be a glance into a window of an out-of-the-way cafe, or sometimes it would be in a shadow behind you as you got into your car at night. Everytime you thought you might have seen him your heart swelled in your chest for a painfully brief moment. And just as soon as hope entered you, it was crushed by cold reality. No man would ever take that sort of interest in you.
In fact, you were so boring and uninteresting that your coworkers had slowly pulled away from you in the months that followed. Your Friday nights became quiet, and somehow you ended up feeling lonelier than before.
As the months passed, strange occurrences that might have once frightened you became reasons to ignore the world and retreat into your fantasies. Finding your door left unlocked was just a sign of how forgetful and sad you'd become. Things going missing were just normal parts of your day. Sometimes, you left your window open at night, as if inviting someone to steal you away. Maybe, if you were lucky, the man at the bar would magically find you and whisk you away from the hell that had become your waking life
But that was all just another lie you told yourself to make it through the day. It was always just another lie.
You pulled yourself into a ball on the sofa, your form swallowed by ratty pillows from third or fourth-hand furniture stores. When was the last time you called your parents? When was the last time they called you? It had been so long, you'd started to wonder if they even remembered you. Considering your last words to them, you doubted it.
It's not like they missed you, not when they had your siblings to focus on. Your sister was their golden idol, your brother was the black sheep. You just became the skeleton in their closet. You could touch the coattails of your sister's glory, but you were always within reach of your brother's failures. Ultimately, you were forgotten between the two of them.
Most people forgot you even existed until they had a task for you to do. You didn’t blame them for it. Why would they remember you when your own parents forgot you? Your only worth came in being used by others for their own meaningless agendas. You could be a designated driver, or you could be the office coffee runner. Most often you were the person to clean up a coworkers' paperwork when they were on a deadline. You were like water, flowing in and filling the cracks as they were made in the grey concrete. You wedged yourself into the tightest spots, ultimately trapping yourself into unwanted favours or deals that were never returned to you.
So, you sat alone on your sofa, crying with dry eyes. You did it every night. It was a ritual you followed dogmatically. What had happened to you to make this your reality? Where did you go wrong? No matter how many times you asked yourself the questions, answers never formed. Maybe it was the fact that you didn't try harder in school. Maybe it was the fact you didn't try harder to stay in touch with the people who at least pretended to be your friend in college. It would've been nice if you could lose yourself in the big city and reinvent yourself like they always did in those glitzy Hollywood movies you liked to watch at night, but you were shackled to your mediocrity. Your reality. Since moving out, you'd become a shadow lingering on the edge of the city of lights.
Your apartment was a brumous sanctuary from the blinding glory of the world outside. Here you could take refuge in the water dripping from your kitchen ceiling, steadily filling the pot you kept in place below it.. There was a strangely meditative quality to the dripping faucet in your bathroom as you stayed up too late on your dingy sofa. The lights were left out, leaving the tv as a glowing monolith to a life you couldn't afford to have. The laugh track from the sitcom you put on echoed off the unwashed walls.
You didn't have enough for therapy, but you had enough for an Amazon Prime subscription that fed you with chocolate bars and episodes of whatever mindless drivel you found before you crashed. You had some reality tv show on, but the words were muffled and the colours bled together. At this point, you only watched tv to have some semblance of company. The actors at least laughed with you.
Aside from the tv, there was a shrouded quiet in the apartment. It was a familiar, albeit unwelcome aspect to your life. If you could have a pet you might've jumped at the opportunity, but you didn't know if you were allowed to have one and your landlord only answered an email if it had a lawsuit attached to it. Anyways, if you did have a pet, you worried it would consider you boring too. Maybe it would be animal cruelty to force a creature to love you as you were.
You were occupied by the philosophies of ethics of losers like yourself keeping pets when you were startled by a large crashing sound behind you, followed by a stream of hushed cursing.
You whipped your head to look behind you, where your kitchen window had been opened and a mug had been smashed on the floor. A dark figure rose up like the ominous omens of a croaking crow. You watched as the figure turned to look at you.
He looked... Familiar.
Just as you thought to pick up your phone, the figure lunged at you. A cloth was pressed to your face. You should've screamed. Instead, you thrashed desperately before feeling a sudden weakness overcome you.
“I’m sorry,” you heard a strangely familiar voice say.
In an instant, your world became hazy, and darkness enveloped you.